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Slavery and the Plantation in the New World: The Development and Diffusion of a Social Form*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sidney M. Greenfield
Sidney M. Greenfield*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

Students of slavery and the plantation system long have realized that there were differences between the forms taken by these institutions in the New World colonies of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula and those of the Anglo-Saxon nations of northwestern Europe. Several attempts have been made to compare selected areas of Iberian and Anglo- American plantation societies in the hope of specifying the nature of the differences. Unfortunately, these comparisons, rooted at times in the best techniques of historical and, in cases, sociological analysis, have focused on the Spanish colonies—and most often on the Cuban case—as the example of the Iberian pattern, arid the southern part of the United States, or parts of the British West Indies, as representative of the Anglo-American form.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 44 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1969

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C., November 30 to December 30, 1967.

References

1 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947)Google Scholar; Elkins, Stanley M., Slavery, a Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Klein, Herbert S., Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Several studies that are not explicitly comparative have appeared recently on specific islands in the British West Indies. See: Elsa V. Goveia, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967); and Michael G. Smith, “Social Structure in the British Caribbean about 1820,” Social and Economic Studies, Vol. I (1953), pp. 55-80.

3 Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar (2 vols., London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1950).

4 Mervyn Ratekin, “The Early Sugar Industry in Española,” Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. XXXIV (1955), pp. 1-19.

5 For the history of the Portuguese expansion see: Gomes Eannes De Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1896); J. W. Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560 (2 vols., London, 1942); Damião Peres, Descobrimentos Portugueses (Porto, 1943).

6 Edmund O. von Lippmann, História do Açúcar (2 vols., Rio de laneiro: Instituto do Açúcar e Alcool, 1942).

7 Atkinson, William C., A History of Spain and Portgual (London: Pelican Books, 1960)Google Scholar.

8 … Madeira and the Azores had been colonized by the development of a system of concessions to prominent families who, in return for privileges, undertook to settle their retainers on the islands. By this system the Atlantic islands were soon producing large quantities of sugar and wine, providing not only valuable exports for the Port of Lisbon, but … experience for subsequent colonization of Brazil.” H. V. Livermore, “Portuguese History,” in Livermore, H. V., ed., Portugal and Brazil (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 60.Google Scholar

9 The definition of what was worthwhile, or of value, was phrased in terms of sources of material wealth. Potential colonies existed, in the eyes of their owners, to provide wealth and little else. In the absence of a source of wealth, there was little reason to engage in the effort and expense of organizing a colony.

10 Lippman, História do Açúcar., Vol. I, p. 12.

11 A papal bull of Pope Nicholas V (January 8, 1454) authorized the Portuguese “to attack, subject, and reduce to perpetual slavery, the Saracens, Pagans, and other enemies of Christ southward from Capes Bojador and Mon, including all the coast of Guinea.” Reynaldus Oberdicus, Annates Ecclesiastici (Lucae, 1753) quoted in Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, p. 292.

12 José Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza africana en el Nuevo Mundo (4 vols., Barcelona, 1879) Vol. I, pp. 35 and 36.

13 The first slaves were captured. In time, however, the Portuguese came to exchange textiles, hardware, hides, etc., with Arab, Berber, and Negro agents from the hinterland for gold dust and slaves.

14 Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964); Alexander Marchant, “The Unity of Brazilian History” in T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant, eds.; Brazil: Portrait of Half a Continent (New York: The Dryden Press, 1951).

15 Antonio Candido writes of Brazil for a later period: “Paternal authority [that of the paterfamilias] was practically unlimited, since the sons remained subject to the father as long as he lived, dwelling in his house or in one that he gave them. Economic and political initiative was his by right, and the proof of his omnipotence is encountered in some of the extreme cases in which he passed judgment upon rebellious offspring just as he judged his retainers and adversaries—without resort to royal justice.” Antonio Candido, “The Brazilian Family,” in T. Lynn Smith and Alexander Marchant, eds., Brazil, p. 295.

16 See Sidney M. Greenfield, “Patronage Networks, Factions, Political Parties and National Integration in Contemporary Brazilian Society” (to be published in The Journal of Developing Areas); “Power Politics and Patronage: A Model of National Integration” (unpublished manuscript).

17 Brazilwood, of value as a dye in the manufacture of textiles, provided the initial impetus for the Portuguese occupation of her New World domains. Its worth to the Crown, however, was small in comparison with the riches to be obtained in the Orient.

18 … The Portuguese Crown fell back on the methods that had proven successful in the Azores and Madeira. Here most estates or fiefs had been granted to vassals of the Crown known as donataries ﹛donatarios) who had assumed responsibility for the settlement and exploitation of their grants and had agreed to pay the Crown a portion of the taxes and revenues collected. In return they had been invested with almost sovereign powers. An analogous method was now applied to Brazil.” João Calogeras, A History of Brazil (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1939), p. 8.

19 Lippmann, Historia do Açúcar, Vol. I, p. 31; Sir Harry H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World (London, 1910), p. 78.

20 Ratekin, op. cit., pp. 1-19.

21 Marchant, Alexander, From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500-1580 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1942).Google Scholar

22 The slaving expeditions of the bandeirantes from the Sáo Paulo plateau served: 1. to expand the territory of the colony past the Tordesillas line; and 2. to stimulate the search for gold that resulted in the discovery of gold and diamonds in the interior of Minas Gerais at the end of the seventeenth century. Richard M. Morse, ed., The Bandeirantes: The Historical Role of the Brazilian Pathfinders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965).

23 Max Fleuiss, História Administrativa do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos de São Paulo, 1942), p. 6; Raymundo Faoro, Os Donos do Poder (Rio de Janeiro: Epitôra Globo, 1958); Edmundo Zenha, O Município no Brasil, 1532-1700 (São Paulo, 1948).

24 Boxer, C. R., Portuguese Society in the Tropics: The Municipal Councils of Goa, Macao, Bahia, and Luanda, 1510-1800 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Maria Isaura Pereira De Queiroz, O Mandonismo Local na Vida Política Brasileira (Anhembi 24, pp. 253-373, 1956).

25 N. P. MacDonald, The Land People of Brazil (London, 1959).

26 De Queiroz, op. cit.

27 Harris, Marvin, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York: Walker and Company, 1964).Google Scholar

28 Boxer, C. R., The Dutch in Brazil (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 14–18.Google Scholar

29 Andre João Antonil, Cultura e Opulencia do Brasil, por Suas Drogas e Minas (Lisbon, 1711).

30 Boxer, op. cit.

31 Harlow, Vincent T., A History of Barbados, 1625-1685 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1926.)Google Scholar

32 John Poyer, The History of Barbados (London: Printed for L. Mawman, 1808).

33 A. D. Chandler, “The Expansion of Barbados,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol. XIII (1946), pp. 106-136.

34 This figure becomes more striking when it is recalled that in the same period the populations of Massachusetts and Virginia, the two largest mainland colonies, were only about 15,000 each. Ibid., 106.

35 Greenfield, Sidney M., English Rustics in Black Skin: A Study of Modern Family Forms in a Pre-Industrialized Society (New Haven: College and University Press, 1966), p. 39.Google Scholar

38 Harlow, A History of Barbados, p. 24.

37 Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1657).

38 Ibid., p. 23.

39 Poyer, The History of Barbados, p. 41.

40 Harlow, op. tit., p. 420.

41 Conrad M. Arensberg, “Discussion of Methods of Community Analysis in the Caribbean,” by Robert Manners in Caribbean Studies: A Symposium, Vera Rubin, ed. (Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Studies, 1957); Greenfield, English Rustics in Black Skin, pp. 160ff